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Athlete-Led Studios Stay Active in Sports Shoulder Content – Sportico

admin January 14, 2025

                        By  <a class="c-link  lrv-a-unstyle-link" href="https://www.sportico.com/author/jason-clinkscales/"             >   Jason Clinkscales</a>                       <br>Reporter/Editor, Breaking News<br>  In December, Luminate released a report about the state of sports content on streaming services outside of live games. The &ldquo;2024 Sports Shoulder Content Report&rdquo; provides a bird&rsquo;s eye view of how <a  href="https://www.sportico.com/t/sports-documentaries/"  id="auto-tag_sports-documentaries_1"  data-tag="sports-documentaries"  >sports documentaries</a> have performed over the last five years while also diving deeper into the consumption of popular <a  href="https://www.sportico.com/t/netflix/"  id="auto-tag_netflix_1"  data-tag="netflix"  >Netflix</a> series such as <em>Formula 1: Drive to Survive</em> and <em>Quarterback</em>.<br>    Many of these shows have come from sports-centric production companies, including several fronted by athletes. Some efforts have been criticized for their inability to sustain compelling narratives throughout the course of a season. Luminate&rsquo;s data revealed that the minutes watched of certain programs like <em>Receiver</em>, the follow-up to <em>Quarterback</em>, and season two of <em>Full Swing</em> had sharp declines.   <div class="admz" id="adm-inline-article-ad-1">                     <div class="adma boomerang" data-device="Desktop" data-width="300">                  <div style="min-width:300px;min-height:275px;"     class="pmc-adm-boomerang-pub-div ad-text"   data-priority="10" >    <div id="gpt-sprt-dsk-tab-midarticle-uid0"      class="adw-300 adh-250" data-is-adhesion-ad="">         <script type="application/javascript">

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Ross Raphael, a veteran talent agent for CAA, noted that report did not capture data through the end of the year, where more shoulder content became available in the fall and winter months. With more shows being produced, he said quality likely suffered.
“There was such a huge uptick in the volume … with more networks buying sports and the existing buyers buying more of it,” Raphael said in a phone interview, “that it inevitably makes it more difficult to uphold a high standard of quality premium programming. However, I believe quality will and does always continue to cut through.”
For streamers such as Netflix, Prime Video, Max and others, the shoulder content serves to complement the live sports rights they have picked up over the last few years. The volume of these programs exploded during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as streamers and networks were looking for their versions of ESPN’s 2020 docuseries The Last Dance. The series on Michael Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-98 averaged 6.7 million viewers per episode and became the network’s most-watched documentary series.
Raphael cited the premier of Meadowlark Media’s The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox on Netflix as evidence that the sports documentary genre still has life. “It was a gigantic hit, spending nearly two weeks in the top 10, and had the highest retention rate for a sports series on the platform in years,” Raphael said.
Some production companies have continued to feed that beast, most notably Box-to-Box, the studio behind Drive to Survive, and Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions.
Others have diversified from documentaries. One such athlete-led studio is Unanimous Media, the production unit for Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry. Alongside Shaquille O’Neal, the studio produced The Queen of Basketball, which took home an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film in 2023. But it is most known for the ABC series Holey Moley and the animated version of Good Times for Netflix.

Unanimous hasn’t put all its eggs in the TV or film production baskets. In 2020, Curry and Erick Payton, the company’s CEO, were producing Underrated, the documentary about Curry’s emergence from Davidson College to his incomparable NBA career. As the appetite for sports shoulder content grew, Curry and Payton were thinking about branching out into comics, books, podcasts and gaming.
“All of them are built to inspire. All of them are built to have really big upsides,” Payton said in a video interview. “From a very high-level perspective, we looked at it as we have a little time. There’s not a vertical that we can’t operate around, so let’s create a business. And that’s why we’ve continued to be profitable every single year we’ve been open.”
While financials were not disclosed, Payton said Unanimous Media is projected to grow revenue again in 2024. The company has a production deal with NBCUniversal and has produced series for the media giant’s Peacock streaming service. Its most recent offering is Mr. Basketball, an eight-episode comedy series starring Curry and Adam Pally that debuted on Peacock during the Summer Olympics and aired on NBC later in the fall.
To Raphael, the criticism of recent sports shoulder content on the streamers isn’t slowing down the demand for it, especially when it comes from the athletes themselves.
“I think it goes back to we are in a time where society and culture is extremely interested in what is happening in these athletes’ lives,” Raphael said. “Especially with the dislocation in sports media, you see a lot of these athletes owning their own content, owning their own narrative, and their names open doors. It brings built-in marketing, but it also brings access at a time when access could never be more important.”
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